SofusRud

Welp, some more interesting (and weird) stuff happened in the world of KSP today. I was messing around with a prototype VTOLSSTO, and managed to get it to work: I managed to build it in such a way that the COM barely moves, which is important for VTOLs what with COT for the jets having to be quite precisely on it. But I did promise weirdness, and here it is: I deorbited, and just as I was heading for the runway, 2km up, half of my tailplane explodes! I check the flight log, and apparently I hit the... launchpad... wut:huh:? I keep going, thinking that I'm sure Jeb can handle the challenge, when suddenly, the other half explodes as well, and you guessed it: launchpad! Now Jeb's in trouble, it could work with half a tailplane, but no tailplane and the COL has moved way too far forward. I fire up the VTOL engines, fighting the aerodynamic forces, angle myself to kill forward velocity to stop the lifting forces, and managed to touch down at 14 m/s a few meters from the runway. All things considered, a rocky but still successful and quite exciting maiden voyage for this little VTOLSSTO. Now I just gotta find a name for it.

Time to share some of the stuff that I have been up to lately. At the moment I'm operating a space agency with a strong commitment to Full Reusability, which is a bit of a step up from my previous "no debris" save, what with the amount of effort that has to be put into design and flight. But anyway, using only cargo SSTOs I have, among other things put together a space station and a mission to Duna. Today I assembled a new nuclear tug. this took three flights in total. Firstly there was the central command unit, seen here in the cargo bay of a Kylon-2 before release: Next came the two nuclear engines, each of which i gets attached to one of those two inline docking ports by service droid, and then the droids are released and return to the spaceplane (a Thunderlane Mk-5): And finally, all the tug needed was a big fuel tank: The tug is now ready to carry cargo around the Kerbol system But that's not all I have been up to. You'll remember I mentioned a Duna mission earlier, and though I didn't do all of these things today, I still feel I should share. Here we see the interplanetary mission, "Tirek", perform its' Kerbin escape burn: Performing a capture burn after a bit of areobraking: The landing part of them mission has two components, the lander and the rover. The lander, as seen here, managed to land without any trouble: Next up was the rover: The rover was designed to get back into orbit, through the use of a self-righting mechanism that I am kinda proud of As you can see in this next picture, I overshot the landing by a bit, and so I ended up driving the 30km to the lander. But I finally made it, giving Bill and Bob something else to stand on top of.

Building a cargo SSTO that can lift a jumbo into orbit

Given the way KSP handels gravity and atmospheres, you are basically asking for the ability to make custom celestial bodies in-game, something that otherwise requires you to decompile the game. I wouldn't hold out hope for this being implemented

Single-Stage-to-Laythe rocket y'all!

I sent an SSTO-launched ion craft to Moho once, and this was in 0.23, before the ions got buffed too! Sure burn times were a bit of a chore, but I feel it was worth it.

I'll give it a go SOI: Moho Mission: Modular Surface Base Return: I dare ya

I was adding some parts to my space station, an orange tank, a lab and habitation module, and a claw today, when something weird happened. When I attached the claw and released the tug (It was attached by the claw to free up the docking port for docking) I got a massive phantom force on my station. Before I knew what had happened, Cloudbase Kerbin-1 went from a neat 87-by-88km orbit to a 41-by-132! Now this is a station that I have been meticulously assembling bit by bit with everything brought up on an SSTO cargo-shuttle, so I was not happy with the prospect of losing it. The station itself is not balanced and has no onboard RCS system. All it has for manouvering is a probe tug (on the top left) and a MMU (on the bottom of the middle section) and these are not meant for moving the whole thing. But I decided that I had to try to rescue the thing regardless. I had to disable the RCS on the probe tug because it was causing me to rotate when I thrusted forwards, so that left me with 2 usable thrusters. I tell you, shifting 106 tons of space-station 36m/s on two thrusters is a daunting task, even without the fact that I was gonna pass through atmo. In spite of these issues, and another one which I'll get to, I eventually managed to put it on a 72-by-110km orbit, where the station will remain until I conjure up the patience to put it in a less eccentric orbit. The Other Issue: Phantom Forces After the incident that caused my stations' orbit to go all wonky, I noticed something else. Whenever I would start time acceleration, the station would be attacked by phantom forces, causing the two "arms" (the ones with the jumbo and all the RCS respectively) to be pulled backwards (away from Cupola) with great force. These forces also manifested when the parts which they acted on were disconnected from the rest of the station. Fortunately, asking for help on the forums proved helpful, and the issue is now resolved, and I can proceed to add stuff to the station in future. Oh and I also did 3 SSTO flights without incident, but that kinda goes without saying.

One time, during a career mode early mun mission, I accidentally EVA'ed Jeb duing the LKO-Mun burn. The ship didn't have a probe core, and so I had wait for it to go 2.5km from Jeb before it stopped accelerating. I then made the rendezvous with the ship with my Jeb on his jetpack, and had to do everything by eye, no navball. I made it back to the craft after 1 orbit, and with 0.05 units of jetpack fuel left.

I dunno why, but it worked, so I'm happy either way. There is only one SAS unit, on the MMU on the bottom.

That worked, thanks!

Today I was working on my space station as seen below. However, I encountered a number of problems after I attached the CLAW that you see on one of the extensions. I experienced some form of phantom force, cause my neat 88-by-87km orbit suddenly became a 41-132. I eventually managed to pull the periapse out of atmo (no small feat to shift 106 tons with only two usable thrusters on an unbalanced station) but a problem persists. Whenever I activate time warp, something pulls the two... lets call them "outside sections" (the ones with orange tank and Lab unit and the one with all the RCS), backwards (Opposite direction of the Cupola) with such force that it rips the statio apart. Seen here (the girder segments bend them inward and cause the explosion): Not only that, but I discovered that this happens even when they are disconnected from the middle section first. They just fly off!: As you can imagine this is quite a big deal. I have to go to space center in order to timewarp it, and it makes it very difficult for me to continue construction on it if this continues. The station was painstakingly put together by ferrying every piece into orbit on an SSTO spaceplane, so I'd rather not have to loose it. I only use the Stock Rebalance mod, and all it does is change the stats of some parts, of which none are on the station. Here is the persistence file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gsmsmnaidgo93ji/persistent.sfs Any help is appreciated

Doesn't work for SSTOs. I propose amending or adding an exception clause to cover this.

How does that work? It seems as if it would motivate Kerbals to not go into space, on account of the fact that death metal is awesome.

I agree, but i think that trailer needs a remake, parts of it are starting to look a bit dated

My Kylon-2 As you can see it can lift a certain orange object into orbit. All the details: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/82913-Kylon-2-The-Re-SSTOening

and you can go faster on the jet engines if you are carrying a lighter rocket engine. LV-T30 is lighter than the aerospike.

Here's a little space station that I got sitting in LKO. The entire thing was lifted into orbit, bit by bit, on SSTO spaceplanes. here is another space station, this time sitting in orbit around Laythe Lots of Tugs and a surface shuttle on there

When I was a kid, wide-eyed and at constant risk of choking-hazard toys, my great-grandpappy used to say that, "the true value of an SSTO spaceplane is directly proportional to both the mass and volume of the cargo it can put into orbit". I reflected on these words of wisdom today as I, with not much better to do and slight headache, threw together the latest pride of my launch fleet. This new craft can be called an evolution on my Kylon (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79535-The-Kylon-my-best-high-capacity-SSTO-so-far?p=1149327#post1149327), and as such has been inovatively, after a long and taxing brainstorming session, named Kylon-2! Fans of the original Kylon will note a number of similarities between that craft and this one. The main fuselage is basically the same, except for a significantly lengthened and reworked cargo bay. The engine pods are also similar, but now feature three turbojets instead of one, and the layout and number of intakes has been altered. The wings, tailplane and frontal-delta-wing-canard thing have also been custom built for the craft. an effort was also made to reduce the number of easily visible struts. The Kylon-2 needs the drop at the end of the runway to take off, but from there handles beautifully. With the Jumbo cargo I got it up to about 1500 m/s before the Rapiers switched over. After that its pitch up until the turbos start giving out and then shutting both them and the intakes off. It makes it into orbit with a comfortable margin. After a deorbit burn, the oxidiser is pumped into the front of the central fuselage as balast, whilst the liquid fuel gets pumped to the front of the engine pods. My decent fell a bit short, but I blame my own piloting skills for that, and anyway it has enough cross-range capability to make it without a problem. One of the coolest things about this, in my opinion, is that I managed to do this on the maiden flight. This is the first time something as complicated as a heavy cargo SSTO has worked flawlessly for me on the first try! Anyway, here are some of the important details: Action groups: 1 - toggle jets 2 - toggle RAPIERs 3 - RAPIER switch mode 4 - toggle intakes Part clipping was not enabled during the construction of this craft. The Kylon-2 is a Subassembly Part count: 253 The DL: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vkj2htamdar0cg4/Kylon-2.craft Feedback/constructive criticism is appreciated

Don't worry, the junk will spread out over time, and unless you plan on going retrograde in that same 20k orbit your relative velocities shouldn't be a bother. In other news, I decided to take a crack at an even heavier cargo SSTO than I had attempted before, and I succeeded! My previous record was 21.4 tons with my Kylon SSTO (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79535-The-Kylon-my-best-high-capacity-SSTO-so-far) and my new craft, innovatively called the Kylon-2, has surpassed it by lifting a full Jumbo (+two Snr docking ports), 36.4 tons, into orbit. Not only that but it was 100% successful on the very first flight! You'd almost think that I'd somehow gotten good at this game.

No, don't do that. At the altitudes where you would ignite the rocket engine, the ISP of the rocket is already close to max. TWR is more important at that stage, and that engine, I'm guessing LV-T45, is better. In fact I'd recommend switching to the LV-T30 instead.

I too struggle with SSTL spaceplanes, however, the new ARM parts make it a cinch if you go the VAB route:

I put together some more of the pieces for my new Duna mission. But this isn't just any old mission to Duna! No sir, this mission will be 100% reuseable! Everything is lifted by SSTO, with most of the heavy lifting done by my Kylon (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79535-The-Kylon-my-best-high-capacity-SSTO-so-far), which broke its own record for mass-to-orbit today, carrying a +21 ton cargo, seen here: The mission craft, named "Tirek" is assembled in LKO The craft currently consists of five modules as seen below. In the middle at the bottom we have the propulsion unit, which will be doing all of the burns. Above it we have the docking array, which is the only part not carried into orbit on a Kylon but rather a Thunderlane Mk-5 (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/65968-Thunderlane-Mk-5-Becausethe-old-one-needed-an-upgrade) due to lenght issues (and even then it had to angled awkwardly). On the left we have the lander, a very simple affair, and pretty self-explanatory, and to the right we have the rover, known as Ice Dentist 2.1 The rover Ice Dentist is interesting because it is the result of having to have a rover that is reusable. Don't wanna leave this thing behind, and to do this i had to design a clever self-rightening mechanism. It uses the landing legs to achieve this before takeoff, as demonstrated below: I'm still not quite ready to take Tirek to Duna yet though. The fuel tank in the docking array needs a refill, the probe on the top needs to be taken back to Kerbin, and I want to include a habitation module on the top.

A recent flight has confirmed that the Kylon can take over to 21 tons to orbit rather than just 19!

This thing: the Kylon Can put 19 tons of payload into orbit. probably more but i haven't tested it yet. Super stable in atmo I've built an entire space station using this SSTO almost exclusively